---
title: Mrs. Balfour's telling redeems it from the usual dulness of folk-tal… — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Mrs. Balfour's telling redeems it from the usual dulness of folk-tales with a moral or a double meaning. Who acts: telling, Mrs.. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, LIX. Coat O Clay, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# More English Fairy Tales, LIX. Coat O Clay, sentence 5

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Mrs. Balfour's telling redeems it from the usual dulness of folk-tales with a moral or a double meaning.

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**Who acts:** telling, Mrs. · **What happens:** redeem, tell · **To what, where:** pun, usual dulness · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, LIX. Coat O Clay. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (telling, Mrs.), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg14241:50:5
# text = Mrs. Balfour's telling redeems it from the usual dulness of folk-tales with a moral or a double meaning.
1	Mrs.	Mrs.	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	_
2	Balfour	Balfour	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	1	flat	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	's	's	PART	POS	_	1	case	_	_
4	telling	telling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	redeems	redeem	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	from	from	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	usual	usual	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	dulness	dulness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	folk	folk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	tales	tale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nmod	_	_
15	with	with	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	moral	moral	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	_
18	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	double	double	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	meaning	meaning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **redeem** | present | Mrs.'s telling | pun |  | the usual dulness of folk tales with a moral or a double meaning |  |  | vn steal-10.5 «NP V NP PP.source»: agent=Agent it=Theme from dulness=Source |
| 2 | **tell** |  | Mrs. |  |  |  |  |  | nom telling «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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